Are environment and development diametrically opposed?

It is the stick with which the greens are beaten daily: if we spend
money on protecting the environment, the poor will starve, or freeze to
death, or will go without shoes and education. Most of those making this
argument do so disingenuously: they support the conservative or
libertarian politics that keep the poor in their place and ensure that
the 1% harvest the lion's share of the world's resources.

Journalists
writing for the corporate press, with views somewhere to the right of
Vlad the Impaler and no prior record of concern for the poor, suddenly
become their doughty champions when the interests of the proprietorial
class are threatened. If tar sands cannot be extracted in Canada, they
maintain, subsistence farmers in Africa will starve. If Tesco's profits
are threatened, children will die of malaria. When it is done cleverly,
promoting the interests of corporations and the ultra-rich under the
guise of concern for the poor is an effective public relations strategy.

Even
so, it is true that there is sometimes a clash between environmental
policies and social justice, especially when the policies have been
poorly designed, as I argued on this blog last month.

But
while individual policies can be bad for the poor, is the protection of
the environment inherently incompatible with social justice? This is
the question addressed in a discussion paper published by Oxfam on Monday.

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